immanence a term most often used in contrast to ‘transcendence’ to express the way in which God is thought to be present in the world. The most extreme form of immanence is expressed in pantheism, which identifies God’s substance either partly or wholly with the world. In contrast to pantheism, Judaism and Christianity hold God to be a totally separate substance from the world. In Christianity, the separateness of God’s substance from that of the world is guaranteed by the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. Aquinas held that God is in the world as an efficient cause is present to that on which it acts. Thus, God is present in the world by continuously acting on it to preserve it in existence. Perhaps the weakest notion of immanence is expressed in eighteenth- and nineteenthcentury deism, in which God initially creates the world and institutes its universal laws, but is basically an absentee landlord, exercising no providential activity over its continuing history. See also DEISM, NATURAL RELIGION , PHI- LOSOPHY OF RELIGION , TRANSCENDENC.
W.L.R.